The One and Only

Luc Sante, the author of “Low Life,” a book about small-time criminal activity in old New York, left the city six years ago for the Hudson Valley, but the other day he found occasion, from his rustic perch, to comment on the rebirth of the art of the urban swindle. “From all indications, street crime is back in a big way,” Sante said.

Among those signs is the recent appearance, in the neighborhood around Columbia University, of a classic tourist con—a sidewalk collision, followed by a dropped (and inevitably broken) object (usually sunglasses), and then a demand for compensatory damages. This updated scam, which preys on the liberal guilt of middle-class college kids, has duped several Columbia students in the past month.

“In terms of archetypes, the student is in the role of the visiting farmer, which was a common role in the nineteenth century,” Sante said. “You had the Gold-Brick Scam, which was literally a gold-painted brick, and the Green-Goods Scam, which involved a machine with a crank, where you inserted a blank slip of paper and green currency would come out the other end.” He pulled a book off his shelf—“Broadway Racketeers,” from 1928—and began naming some more of his favorite city cons: “the Iron Hat, the Puff Racket, the Tat, the Silver Fox Fur—and its variant, the Cat-and-Rat Farm.”

The farmers in our story are Francis Bartus and Nick Camp, Columbia freshmen from, respectively, the suburbs of Detroit and Baltimore. Francis has a Mohawk, and Nick wears a goatee. They met last fall during the college’s community-service-driven orientation program, “Urban Experience.” A few Saturdays ago, they set off for a walk, stopping to admire the Cathedral of St. John the Divine before continuing down Columbus Avenue. “It was a beautiful afternoon,” Francis said. “A lot of people out and about.”

When they reached 107th Street, Francis felt his arm collide with another arm, which was carrying a bag. “It felt like a bag of ice: heavy and lumpy,” he said. The bag dropped and, from the sound of it, a glass bottle broke. The students crossed the street, looked back, and saw a man and a woman, both in hooded sweatshirts, looking at the ground, where “pink stuff” could be seen oozing out of the bag. The couple, who, Nick said, appeared to be of “young middle age: late twenties, early thirties,” came after them. Francis and Nick started heading south in a hurry—“He’s a big, built guy,” Francis said—but they were overtaken. “The guy gets in front of us, and he goes, ‘You’re going to replace that for her,’ ” Francis said. “ ‘She needs that. That’s medicine for the baby.’ ”

“The woman looked as if you wouldn’t want to ask if she was pregnant,” Nick said. “She’s ambiguously pregnant.”

The man told Francis and Nick to come with them to a pharmacy on Fifth Avenue. Francis whispered to Nick that they should try to run for it, but Nick declined: “I had on flip-flops, and I’m out of shape.”

The foursome made it to Central Park West and turned north. “They’re pointing out A.T.M.s,” Francis said. “I’m, like, ‘No, it’s got to be a Chase or a Duane Reade.’ I didn’t want to pay the transaction fee. Finally, the woman says, ‘There’s a Duane Reade on Amsterdam.’ ”

“I felt guilty about walking them this way when they had to go the other way,” Nick said.

Once inside the Duane Reade, the two boys began plotting a getaway, looking for alternate exits: no luck. So Francis used the A.T.M. and handed the man a twenty-dollar bill: “He’s, like, ‘No, I don’t need your money. I need the medicine. It’s forty-two dollars.’ ”

“This was the first time that number had entered the conversation,” Nick said. They gave the man another twenty, and the two pairs parted.

About a week later, after the swindlers pulled the same trick on some students at a street fair on Broadway, an article describing the con appeared in the Columbia Spectator, naming Francis as a victim. His mom, back in Michigan, sent him a text message that morning: “You got ho’ed!”

Nick chose not to tell his parents. “Absolutely not,” he said.

“In the history of the short con, this is closest to the Wallet Drop,” Sante said, after hearing the boys’ story. “It falls midway between the mutual finding of the wallet and, on the other hand, the ‘Oops I Just Squeezed Mustard on Your Shirt.’ ”

Ben McGrath began working at The New Yorker in 1999, and has been a staff writer since 2003.